Retrieve current timezone

General Usage
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1

I am missing two things in Dates/TimeZones

  1. convert a unix timestamp into the computer’s local time
  2. determine the system’s timezone

Maybe I missed something?

For 1) I have found a solution, which could go into Dates a similar way, I think:

@inline locale_offset() = round(now() - unix2datetime(time()), Minute)
unix2locale(x) = unix2datetime(x) + locale_offset()

For 2) I have found a workaround for unix-like systems

locale_timezone() = TimeZone(join(split(readlink("/etc/localtime"), '/')[end-1:end], '/'))

Would be happy to hear what other users think.

2 
julia> Dates.Minute(now()-now(UTC))
60 minutes
# or
julia> Dates.Hour(now()-now(UTC))
1 hour

would be shorter (for the ‘locale_offset’ part)

3

But this requires TimeZones to be loaded…
And you still risk to end up with one millisecond on top of the hour if you do not perform rounding …

4

I’d even vote for adding

@include locale_timezonestring() = join(split(readlink("/etc/localtime"), '/')[end-1:end], '/')

to Dates and

locale_timezone() = TimeZone(locale_timezonestring())

to TimeZones

5

‘now()-now(UTC)’ works here, no 'TimeZones.jl` package. For reliable results the host system must be properly configured regarding timezone, NTP, etc.

6

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn’t aware of UTC being part of Dates.
Still, rounding to minutes is a good idea :wink:
BTW, just looked up the definition of now(UTC)

now(::Type{UTC}) = unix2datetime(time())
7

Right, rounding is needed to prevent occasional ‘InexactError’ when converting to Minute/Hour.

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